


A Winternights Carol

by Lady Merewif (Stormbringer)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Headcanon, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, Literary References & Allusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 14:28:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8987521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stormbringer/pseuds/Lady%20Merewif
Summary: It's the first eve of Winternights, the midwinter celebration, when Solas is visited by impossible visions intended to bring him from his course of destruction.





	1. The Vision

**Author's Note:**

> I have endeavoured, in this Ghostly little tale, to provide some entertainment which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, and with the season, or with me. May it haunt your house pleasantly, and offer welcome distraction whether your nights be long or short. 
> 
> Your faithful Friend and Servant,
> 
> L.M.
> 
> Winternights, 2016

**Stave One – The Vision**

There was no doubt Mythal was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. There is no doubt whatever that the All-Mother was dead. Only one still walked still the earth and remembered how it had been long before waking and dreaming were set apart from each other. Solas thought little on it, but, if he were brought to recall the matter, he would remember - and he was convinced - that, yes, Mythal was, indeed, dead. 

Dark, Solas was, in these days, though he had not always been so. As time passed his aspect became even more shadowed, his expression more dire. To any who had known him before, they might not recognize the cold severity. The elements had little influence on him. No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. 

So it was, in these days, if he should pass amongst those he numbered his followers, or in secret amongst those who knew him not, nobody ever stopped him to say “how are you?”, implored him to bestow a trifle, asked him what it was o’clock. No man or woman inquired the way to such and such a place. Even dogs whose ancestors had been wont to snarl and snap at him, when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts. No eye at all is better than an evil eye. 

Once upon a time – of all the good days in the year, during Winternights – Solas was busy at his planning and plotting. There were an hundred thousand things to set into motion, and just as many things to keep in motion since they had been started. There were resources to obtain, numbers to maintain, and minute details here and there of the movements of those few who thought to stop him. He could not allow that, of course. His days were filled with one matter or other, moving steadily towards that single goal. A war council of one is not very impressive, but Solas would have it no other way. 

Upon this night, which was grey with snapping, overcast skies, his vigil was interrupted by a group of spirits and their aspect was one of entreaty.

“What is it?” asked Solas, though he did not look up from his work: Maps upon maps, and figures upon figures.

The spirits’ approach was born of misgivings - and they had them in plenty. The depth of winter merely cast greater light upon them with the waxing of the moon, that bright, cold eye leaning up over the trees. It was such now that it was beyond the spirits’ nature to ignore it, to simply hope that some counter might tip the balance back where it should be. 

“It is the first eve of Winternights,” said one of the spirits. 

“I have some doubt this holiday is in any way remarkable from all the others,” replied Solas. 

The truth of it was, Solas had no use for Winternights and no care to observe it. Indeed, he had thought nothing of it until the spirit brought it to his attention. To him, the knowledge was now only an indicator of the time of year, and the march of time since he had set his great plan in motion. As it was, Winternights conveyed no warning to him, though perhaps it should have done so, given what soon would occur. 

“The world is a more dangerous place to the people in it,” said the spirit. 

Solas must give pause at this. He set aside the missive he had been holding. “Is it any more dangerous?” 

The spirit did not know quite the right response. The group of them huddled together to converse in their own silent language, and at last came upon a reply. 

“It is more dangerous,” said one spirit. 

“Many are hurting already,” said another. 

“And still we have glimpsed of the future even greater pain,” said a third. 

“Even so,” replied Solas, “little change in their lives has changed for better or worse since even before Winternights. Do they yet live?” 

“They yet live,” said a spirit. 

“I am very glad to hear it. I was afraid at first some cataclysm had occurred outside my ken,” said Solas. “I cannot afford to turn my course.” 

“But with what is to come, many would rather die,” said the second spirit. 

“If they had rather die, they had best hurry up and do it then,” answered Solas. 

It was a grim response and one the spirits would have no answer to even if they huddled together again to try. All was for naught, and they made a sad picture of dejection and anxiety, though Solas hardly noticed it. So summarily dismissed, the spirits faded from view and retreated into the trees and further still to their own haunts to fret and pick at the Veil between their world and this one. 

Solas was left to be his own council of war again, and it was far into the night when he laid aside his work and ventured out into the moonlight. Though the moon was high and wide, little of its light reached the ground or treetops, and the world seemed shrouded in a cold and heavy mist. Solas spent some hours wandering, and, having wandered the perimetre of his holdfast, went to the ruin that served as his home. It had once been a great structure, a garrison of ancient Elvhenan, but it was a gloomy place now. One might imagine, when it was a younger structure, that it had been a merry place and vibrant. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, that no one but the Dread Wolf might live in it, all its rooms long crumbled to gravel. The mist of evening hung so heavily about the toppled archway that led inside that it seemed as if a lonely spirit sat in mournful meditation on the threshold. 

There was a statue weathered nearly to nothing beside that archway. Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the statue, except that it seemed to have been of an elven shape. It is also a fact that Solas had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place. Let it also be noted that Solas had not bestowed one thought on the Mythal of old for many hundreds of years. 

Let anyone, then, explain to me how it happened that Solas, passing between the pillars of the crumbled archway, saw the statue, without its undergoing any immediate process of change, not a statue but Mythal herself. 

To say he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger for some time, would be untrue. But Solas continued on, dismissing the apparition as some spirit tugging on a memory of long ago. 

Solas found his accustomed sleeping place at the back of the ruin on a bed of withered ferns just as he had left it, and there were no more strange apparitions nor even the murmuring of spirits. He was quite satisfied that he was alone in this place, and that he might sleep in peace, and wander the Fade at his leisure. But before he had settled there came through the mist a sound like a swell of mourning voices lifted in one, single, piercing call. 

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The cry ceased as it had begun - suddenly - and it was succeeded by a rustling noise across the ruined courtyard, as if someone were dragging themselves slowly across the earth. 

Slowly, revealed in inches, came the form of fallen Mythal, dragging herself over the grass, hair wild, clothing in tatters, and drenched still in the blood of her murder, as red as if she had been felled only the day before. Her eyes were wide and milky white, lips pulled back in a deathly grimace. 

Solas was upon his feet in an instant, and cast about for the spirit that chose to play such a trick - but there were none. The Veil wavered, but it were as if the whole of the place had been abandoned, that the Fade held no memory of it and therefore paid it no mind. Still Mythal came on, until she got to her feet as well, pulling with measured progress her weight up the height of a ruined wall. 

“You don’t believe in me,” observed Mythal. A vision. What else could such a thing be? 

“I don’t,” said Solas. 

“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?” 

“I don’t know,” said Solas. 

“Why do you doubt your senses?” 

“Because,” said Solas, “any number of little things might at this moment affect them.” It was the most reasonable explanation, as no spirit were involved. A product of a fevered mind, drawn into loops of scheming and plans. 

It was at this moment that Mythal’s jaw went slack, and from her came a shriek that shook the stones and rattled the bushes and trees to their roots. It was a scream that emanated from ages past, of the deepest pain, and drew on at least as long as the time since it had first been uttered until finally there were words in it. 

“I know you, Solas, and you know me!” cried she. “Do you believe in me or not?” 

Solas would not admit it, but the cry had left him as shaken as the trees, and in its absence the world seemed raw, as if it had been so viciously used as Mythal herself had been. 

“I must,” replied Solas. “But why do you come to me, and why now?” 

Mythal held up her hand, her arm torn by the slashes of sword and knife, as if it were the cause of all her unavailing grief. 

“By tides unknown by even you, I come near the world again, and gaze upon a place much changed but which I yearn to touch, a place where I might pace upon the earth again, forever out of my reach.” Mythal lowered her arm, but so that she pointed to Solas, her hand trembling as if with a great effort to holding it aloft. “I am here tonight to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping an even worse fate than this. A chance and hope of my procuring, Solas.” 

It was a strangely specific mission for something that should not appear or exist, and Solas was even more in doubt of the vision’s veracity. Perhaps it was an apparition of fevered guilt and doubt, feelings he thought buried and extinguished. 

“You were long ago as a friend to me,” said Solas. 

“Then hear me!” said Mythal. “My time is nearly gone. You will have three visitors here, all from whom you cannot hide.” 

Solas’ countenance shadowed. “Impossible.” 

“It is possible,” said Mythal. “And it will be. Without them, you will pass by the turnings on this path to the furthest point of oblivion. Expect the first at the hour of moonfall. Expect the second at the hour waning. The third at the hour of darkness. Look to see me no more. For your sake, remember what here has passed between us.” 

When the vision had said these words, she dropped to the earth again, and lay as dead as she should, in truth, have been. But then she moved, crawling her way into the fog once more, leaving a trail of blood that evaporated into mist in her wake.


	2. The First

**Stave Two – The First**

Solas had found sleep elusive, which never before had been an issue. He sat, looking out into the ruin from his withered fern bed, counting minutes in quiet meditation. Mythal bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a phantom from some unconscious space in his mind he looked not towards, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through: “Was it a dream or not?”

He was certain he did not believe the reality of the vision he had seen, for still he found no reason for it to appear. Yet, it seemed as though he sat in anticipation, awaiting the appearance of the first visitor which Mythal had mentioned. 

So came the hour of moonfall, when the moon began its descent. 

The fog had not lifted since Mythal’s appearance, and Solas became aware of a figure moving towards him through it, passing each veil of mist until it was fully visible. It was a shape he recognized, and belonging to one who should not have been there any more than Mythal had.

“Cole,” said Solas. 

Cole looked very much the same as when Solas had seen him last, save that he did not wear his characteristic wide-brimmed hat. It was a little strange, to see him bare-headed, pale hair loose about his face, but it seemed to Solas evidence that this was not really Cole, but still a phantom of a tumultuous mind. Perhaps he had not eaten enough. Perhaps he had not had sufficient rest. 

“Hello, Solas,” said Cole. “I’m very glad to see you.” 

Solas could not say the same, if only because this could not be Cole, but another spirit playing masquerade. But when he tested the Veil around him, looked about, he found the courtyard as empty of spirits as before, when Mythal had come from the dark with her dire, inexplicable warning. Save, as before with Mythal, he was not the _only_ presence. For all he could tell, he truly stood with Cole, as if he were indeed the Cole Solas had known. 

“I’m supposed to show you something,” said Cole. “But I don’t think it will make you very happy.” 

“There are not many things that make me happy,” replied Solas. There was a flicker of doubt when he saw the crestfallen look on the boy-spirit’s face, but he could not trust his senses. He had thought he’d seen Mythal before, and now he thought he saw Cole. He could not even trust his sense that before him was any spirit at all.

“There used to be things that made you happy," said Cole. "You can find them again. But you shouldn’t think so hard about me. If your thoughts are too noisy, you’ll miss it.” 

Solas was about to ask what it was he might miss when he realized they were no longer standing in the centre of the old ruin, but in the clearing of an old forest with sentinel trees thousands of feet tall, the boles so wide ten people holding hands around them might not be able to circle them. The mist had vanished, and it was a clear, spring evening, flowers in the canopy opening slowly to drink the evening. 

Solas tested the tree nearest him with a tendril of magic. It was a tree, not a vision. “Impossible.” 

“Yes,” said Cole. “But it is very pretty. You remember it. Calm and quiet, lowing, lulling - murmuring voices on the edge of sleep…” 

There was a movement among the trees and Solas perceived a shape he recognized, and all at once he realized the when as well as the where they were. He looked upon himself, a much younger man, walking quite at his leisure in a world that was quite at its own leisure, too, all told. It was the sleepiest time of the day, the transition from day to night. 

His younger self was joined in an instant by a rush of leaves and branches, another young man bowling him over onto the ground with a laugh. 

“It’s alright,” said Cole. “They can’t see us.” 

The younger Solas fought the other young man off, laughing at the impromptu wrestling match. “Do that again, and I swear I will bite you.” 

“Oh! Spare me!” laughed the other elf, laying his arm dramatically over his eyes. 

“Is this what you wished to show me?” asked Solas. He was beginning to doubt his sanity, for he could not decide what he was experiencing, if it were real of conjured. Surely he could not trap himself in such a way, and if he were dreaming or otherwise he would be able to break the influence with magic, which was an option he found increasingly impossible. 

Cole looked at Solas. “So lucky, to find someone who understood, who reached further, saw more. Like a brother.” 

“Don’t,” said Solas. The wrestling match continued, but the vision around them changed. Solas’ former self and the other elf aged, no longer youths but nigh on adulthood, sparring in earnest rather than play-fighting. The forest, too, changed, becoming a little darker. 

“I am very serious,” said the younger Solas. “I think you should come with me.” 

“I think the greater mages would eat us alive,” the other elf replied. “But I suppose if anyone could convince them of fledgling merit, it would be you, wouldn’t it?” 

“What is the purpose of this?” asked the present Solas. 

“You forgot it,” answered Cole, as if that should be very clear on the surface of it. “You have forgotten a lot of things.” 

Trees grew taller, but many dropped their leaves. It was a change in season, as well as in time. The younger Solas held himself taller, proud in well-wrought armor. The other elf was darker of expression, and not clad so brightly, his armor rougher. They no longer stood together as friends, but as two separated by some unseen force. 

“It wouldn’t do to keep them waiting,” said the other elf. There was bitterness in his voice. 

“You could come with me,” said the younger Solas. 

Solas remembered well the mirthless turn of the other man’s lip, a poor mimicry of a smile. The sting of an old wound opened in his chest to see it played out again, and to see his own impassive expression steeling against the answer he had suspected even before asking the question. There was the baleful light of betrayal in the other elf’s eyes. He remembered that, too. He was not certain it was not justly earned. 

Cole was very quiet, fretting about the edge of his sleeve with his fingers, pulling out strands as if they were knotted memories. “He was very sad you left.” 

“More angry, I think,” said Solas. 

“More sad,” replied Cole. 

The forest melted into a different shape, and season again had changed. Snow drifted down onto stone battlements and an empty courtyard. Shadowy figures passed and repassed as they crossed from keep to inn and back again. It was a moonless night, but Solas knew the walls well enough, and marked the sounds of cheer from the inn door, and the more muted celebration from within the keep. 

“It was a very cold day,” said Cole. He stood on the threshold of the keep, peering in the great doors that had been opened the slightest bit to vent the heat of the crowd within. “And yet it was so warm inside.” 

Solas thought he would much rather stand in the cold than look through those doors as he suspected Cole - or what appeared as Cole - wished him to do, but when it seemed there would be no change if he did nothing, he climbed the steps to the doors and looked inside. 

The great hall was filled to bursting with visitors and dignitaries and all those who could be in good conscience crammed into what usually seemed such a vast space. The tables along the walls were lined with plates and dainties and more robust fare, constantly replaced by servers that were so practiced as to be invisible. There were raised voices, but only in cheer, and there was a pitiful attempt at a dance floor at the further end, if only because so many wanted to dance they could hardly jostle out enough room. 

And warm it was, just as Cole had said. Solas remembered. He also remembered that there were not supposed to be so many, but travel was impossible from the heavy snowfall two days before, and so invitations had to be extended to those important persons who should have been absent for the beginning of the holiday. 

“What night is it?” asked Solas. 

“The first of Winternights,” said Cole. 

Solas underwent the strangest agitation, and found he could not stand there by the door any longer. He slipped inside, and passed through the crowd as unseen as Cole had promised. It was as if he were drawn on by some invisible line, tugging him this way and that way, always to a single point. 

On the upper gallery he found another version of himself, looking down at the crowd. And someone else found him, too, a shadow he could not admit he wanted to see. He was given the opportunity, now, and almost immediately regretted it. 

Idrial Lavellan leaned against the rail beside the other Solas, lips turned up in amusement. “May I join you?” 

When the past Solas turned to speak to Idrial, smiled at her, Solas found himself smiling at the memory of it, of admiring her green dress, and how deftly she’d escaped the crowd below. Then at once he remembered Cole, and became conscious that the spirit’s attention was full upon him. 

“It was a very pretty dress,” said Cole. “You could have told her so.” 

The crowd was abruptly silenced, and the scene changed again in such a sudden fashion that to Solas it seemed violent, an attack upon his senses. Celebration was replaced with the humming of a summer’s night, the sigh the falls into the moon-lit pool. Solas stood in the same position relative to his other self and Idrial, but he abruptly turned away. 

“Whatever you are, and by whatever power you have, remove me from this place,” said Solas. 

Cole was facing him, but his gaze was over Solas’ shoulder, towards the scene Solas refused to look upon. “Mind racing: What is he saying? Why? It was supposed to be _something,_ but this is something else…” 

Solas turned away from Cole just as the shadow of Idrial moved away from his former self. He saw her expression now as he had not seen it then, hurt and anger warring, blue eyes staring off into the dark as if they might set fire to the grove. Then she turned back to him again. 

“What was it to you?” The demand snapped in the air like lightning. “A game, like that in the palace in Orlais?” 

“It was never a game,” said the other Solas. 

“I’m not sure I believe you,” said Idrial. “In fact, I think I understand your reticence now. Always holding back at just the last moment. We could only ever be equals in this - but 'this' never was. And we never were, were we?” 

“I am sorry,” said the other Solas. 

Idrial laughed. “I suppose you will dismiss it gladly, as an unprofitable dream from which it happened well you awoke,” said she. “May you find happiness in the path you have chosen.” 

“Remove me from this place,” Solas said again. 

“Did you see it?” asked Cole, voice earnest. 

Solas turned towards Cole, ready to ask what it was he was supposed to see, but he found himself looking at the wilted bed of ferns in the ruin. Around him the fog was still heavy, weaving between the stones, and the moon had started to fall behind the canopies of the trees. He was alone, no vision of Mythal or Cole to trouble him, but for the first time he could not be certain he was glad in his loneliness.


	3. The Second

**Stave Three – The Second**

The hour of waning was in a moment upon him, and it seemed as though someone had brought a lighted torch into the ruin, so heavily fell his shadow on the ferns. When he turned, he was looking at the courtyard of the ruin - there was no doubt about that - but it had in an instant undergone a surprising transformation. The standing and fallen stones were wrapped in living green, summer vines grown out of the earth and elfroot twining amongst the stems. Trees there were, too, and it looked a perfect grove with bright, gleaming berries, crisp leaves, ivy, holly and mistletoe. The light came from torches pressed into the earth, and it reflected about the courtyard as if the grove were hung with so many little mirrors in the leaves.

These were not the strangest things about the transformation. Upon a stone sat a young woman, and though her eyes were clear and kind, Solas did not like to meet them. 

“Do you not know me?” the woman asked. Her dark curls were loose, crowned with braided holly and ivy, and she was clothed in simple Dalish style, her feet bare. 

“I know your face,” said Solas, compelled to admit it. 

“My face alone, hahren?” the woman replied. “Am I not Idrial’s sister?” 

“You look like that woman,” said Solas, “but I have no reason to believe that is who you are.” 

This did not seem to bother the woman. She stood easily and twisted her hand in the air, conjuring a globe of veilfire that hovered just beside her. For a moment it was bright enough to shame the moon on its slow descent to the horizon. 

“I suppose you didn’t pay much attention to Cole?” the woman asked. “No matter. Come.” 

With a gesture, she moved the veilfire before her, as if she were clearing away a hanging of cobwebs, and, like cobwebs, the air before her charred and burned away, revealing another scene, as if she had simply opened a door and ushered Solas through it. 

They stood in an empty room, plainly decorated though it was clearly a room set in some great building - a mansion, it seemed, for it was not quite the right construction for a keep, a little too home-like despite its plainness. Idrial’s sister canted her head this way and that, moving around the perimetre of the room. Solas turned, as if to return to the courtyard, but found himself looking out a window onto a snow-dusted street. 

The door on the other end of the room opened, ushering in a troop of people, led by a single, severe woman. The fall of her cloak over one shoulder did not escape Solas’ notice, nor the particular coldness of her gaze. Nor did he miss her identity, which he would have known even if he had not turned to face her, had not heard her voice. 

“I know it’s a holiday,” said Idrial to those gathered. Solas recognized a few of them, remnants of the Inquisition, but the others were unknown. Spies - scouts? “But I’m afraid there is still much we must do, and I doubt our enemy will be so polite as to let us observe Winternights.” 

“A war council?” asked Solas. He looked upon Idrial’s sister who seemed to be paying more attention to the papers laid out upon the table in front of the impromptu meeting. “Are you granting me a chance to gain intelligence?” 

“In a manner,” said the woman. “But, should you try cunning here, I think you will find yourself disappointed.” 

“Where is Ethriel?” asked one of the scouts. He looked worried, lips turned down in a frown that, by the lines around it, seemed to be his accustomed expression. 

Idrial’s look did not change. “I do not think Ethriel can be trusted.”

Solas frowned, too, to hear that. Ethriel was one of his own. He made a grave mistake, perhaps, thinking even the best of his spies would escape Idrial’s notice.

He moved to the table and looked at the reports placed there, which Idrial was going over with her scouts and spies. There was much there, he saw. Much more than he had expected she would ever be able to detect. Perhaps his own reports as to the ostensibly defunct Inquisition had been erroneous. 

“Worried they might catch you?” asked Idrial’s sister. 

“They could not,” said Solas. 

“They could not. But _she_ could.” Idrial’s sister moved the veilfire towards Idrial, and the light from it gilded her face and hair with silver in the same instance it deepened the shadows of her expression. It was the face of someone resolved. 

The council was ending. Idrial had moved the papers into a single pile, given out her orders. “I hope you may find time for your families,” said she. “You have my thanks for your loyalty and service.” 

Solas took a moment to consider. “They came here because she summoned them.” 

“They did,” agreed the woman. “Is that so surprising to you?” 

She waved her veilfire again and they were in another place altogether. A shadow ducked into a small lodging house, darting up the stairs. Idrial’s sister led Solas up to the chambre the figure slipped into. The hood came back to reveal an elven woman with red hair - one of the women who had been at Idrial's war council. A child ran into her arms and a dark-haired man stood from the table to greet her with a kiss. 

“You’re not going out again, are you?” asked the man. 

The woman’s smile was sad. This was a conversation they had had many times before and the care it had written on both their faces was in sharp relief under the light of the veilfire Idrial’s sister held aloft. 

“There’s still much to do. We’re making some progress,” said the woman. 

The man frowned, but said nothing. They shared a small meal with their child, and they each told the babe a story when they set her to bed, brushing back her hair with gentle touches. The man had a low, lilting voice, like a singer’s, and for all Solas knew he may have been a performer. When the child was asleep, the man and woman stood apart, pressing into the furthest corner of the room, talking in hushed tones. 

“Couldn’t it wait until after the holiday?” the man was asking. “I’ve hardly seen you in months.” 

“I know,” said the woman. “I miss you, too, but I can’t just sit by and let this happen.” 

“You don’t know that anything is happening.” 

“Something is happening.” 

The argument continued on in this manner and Solas did not understand why Idrial’s sister insisted on being there to hear it. She stood close to the couple, veilfire hovering over her head, interest bright in her gaze. She glanced to Solas and canted her head, as if to silently ask him if he was paying attention. 

At last the woman put her arms around the man and held his head against her shoulder. He was weeping, though as silently as possible. 

“I’m just as scared,” the woman said. “Really. I am. I just can’t sit by and let… I’m doing this for our daughter. I want her to…” 

They both fell silent, just holding each other while their child slept in the bed across the room. 

“Why show me this?” asked Solas. 

Idrial’s sister stepped away from the couple. Her expression had changed. It was far more severe than before - gone all the mildness when she had first appeared. Her eyes reflected the light like a wolf’s might in the shadows. 

“Do you feel nothing?” asked Idrial’s sister. 

Solas felt nothing, but in the moment the thought crossed his mind he knew it was not true. Though they came upon him in quick succession, the visions passed with Cole and now these with Idrial’s sister had left him rattled as much as impatient. Perhaps Idrial had harnessed spirits to her cause - a development he would never have expected. 

“Perhaps it would it be more logical if they simply enjoyed their family while they had the time?” Idrial’s sister persisted. 

“They would be happier,” said Solas. 

“And I suppose if they’d rather die, they’d best hurry up and do it, then.” 

Solas looked to Idrial’s sister, startled to hear his own words from her lips. Idrial’s sister smiled. The light from the veilfire brightened, casting darker shadows against the walls. And so the light became brighter and brighter, and the shadows darker and darker, and the woman’s shadow against the wall writhed, and changed, and stepped forward into the room. It was no longer a shadow, but two dark forms, eyes gleaming like garnet and ruby, bodies black and thin. They flowed like darkness around her, slavering, two wolf-shapes in monstrous aspect. 

“Do you know them?” asked the woman. Her free hand played with the ears of one of the wolves as it snapped at the air. “They are two of your closest friends.” 

There was something about the wolf-shapes that Solas found unsettling, something in their movements, in the gleaming of their eyes. These were not demons, though they felt as powerful spirits to him - too powerful. There was a wrongness to their presence here, as if they had been drawn from far away and bound - bound in the figure that looked like Idrial’s sister. 

“They are not mine,” said Solas. 

“This one is Ignorance,” said Idrial’s sister, touching the shoulder of one, then the other, “and this is Desperation.” 

Solas turned away from the woman and her strange beasts, but found himself looking at them again, as if he had never moved at all. 

“You may look away from them, but they are still there,” said Idrial’s sister. “Oh - they are still there, always hounding your steps. Ignorance you have tried to disown, but with each try he only becomes stronger. And when Desperation devoured her sister Despair you found a much stronger ally for your grand designs.” She laughed. “Ignorance first you should have guarded against, but where he treads so will Desperation follow, and their paws write doom upon the earth wherever they tread.” 

“Leave me,” said Solas, and for the first time that night he felt truly angry. He could strike at Idrial’s sister - or the being that looked like her - she was near enough and he was powerful enough. Or so he believed. “Whatever this game is, it ends now.” 

“Is it still a game to you?” Idrial’s sister asked. “Pawns upon a board?” The wolves twined about her and the veilfire over her head settled on her brow like a glaring eye. “No matter. My time is done. I shall leave you, as you desire.” 

The room around them was dark as shadow, and Solas expected the ruin once again to resolve itself about them. But nothing changed. The veilfire on Idrial’s sister’s brow began to fade, but the dark around them remained. Anger turned to apprehension, and Solas looked into the dark beyond Idrial’s sister - but could see nothing. The wolves’ eyes glinted back at him, winking in the failing light. 

“You cannot leave me here,” said Solas. 

Idrial’s sister smiled, but Solas could not tell in the play of light and shadow what sort of smile it was. The veilfire winked out of a sudden, and all was still and quiet about Solas, as still as if there were no life left on the earth and he the last creature to still draw breath. Solas turned about and still the scene did not change, but he saw the dim flicker of light ahead of him, as if he stood in a haunted cave far from the surface. 

He walked forward, expecting to come out of the vision, but when at last the cavern - for so it was - opened up before him, he could but stare over the scene that greeted him, and the shadow-cloaked figure that stood before him.


	4. The Last

**Stave Four – The Last**

The figure was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible. It was difficult to separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded despite the dim light from above. It was not moonlight or starlight that came down upon them, but the flickering, first bright then dim again, light of the Fade, sparking through the clouds that gathered thick overhead, promising hissing rains for the broken earth below.

“Are you my last visitor?” asked Solas. The figure said nothing, nor did it move. It stood impassive and implacable. 

“Won’t you speak to me?” Still the figure did nothing. Solas chose then to step away from the mouth of the cavern and look over this strange place he had been summoned to. Again, it all seemed real - but it was wrong. There should be no Fadefire in the sky, nor should the earth have buckled in such a way, the sea pouring into a deep basin with a hollow roar. 

“If you will not speak, then at least indicate to me what place this is,” said Solas. “It is not in the Fade, nor is it any place I know upon Thedas.” 

There was a flash of fadefire in the sky, and Solas found he was no longer standing on a cliff overlooking the sea, but in a city that stood ruined. There was evidence of war upon the walls, in the scorched buildings that had long ago stopped smoking. There was, too, no sign of life. 

“I know this place,” said Solas. “This is Denerim. But even under siege it did not look so.” 

Out of the doorway of a house across the street a demon flickered into view, slithering into the centre of the road, turning its head this way and that, before heading into the next building. It was seeking, looking for something that was no longer there. Then Solas became aware of all the other spirits and demons there, listlessly lurking or stalking the roads and windows. 

Solas turned to the dark figure but again the scene had changed, and again and again it changed, showing him one horrifying scene after the next. Cities ruined, forests burned and grown back again - twisted. There were spirits and demons, but all broken. He saw again the room in the mansion in which before he had seen a vision of Idrial, but it was cracked and gutted. He was brought to a tower that somehow still stood despite the rubble piled at its base, and still above it fluttered a flag with the Inquisition’s sigil - but weakly, the colours all faded.

“I am mindful of what you have shown me,” said Solas at last, looking to the figure. “But you have given me no meaning for this, no explanation. Before I had seen the past, and I assume after that it was the present - yet what is this place? What yet might be?” It was impossible, surely. 

The figure turned and with it the landscape changed yet again. Solas found that he was standing on an abandoned heath, gilded in fadefire light. One of the moons, he saw, had burst across the sky, leaving a trail of twisting rubble that may have fallen to the earth save it was held fast by some invisible force, some peculiarity of reality. When he looked further, he saw a figure sitting alone beside a stone. Solas approached, but carefully. It felt of a sudden as if he were approaching the doom the slavering wolves had written. 

The figure he approached was himself. He could not see any appreciable difference in age, but his aspect was ghastly, as if he had not slept in months or years. It was the same care he remembered having worn long ago, when the wars were failing. Next he noticed the stone next to which that other version of himself sat. It was a simple stone, moved to sit upon disturbed earth. 

But it was not the only stone - only one of many. A dozen, two, an hundred - all marching across the earth where still there was earth to be turned. Graves upon graves upon graves marching to the ruptured ends of the earth. 

“There are hundreds of such places now,” said a voice behind him. “This is only the most recent addition.” 

Solas turned, finding a certain horror in the familiarity of the voice. The shadow-cloaked figure dispelled the darkness around itself, revealing Flemeth in her armour, a sword in hand. The woman smiled. 

“You did not expect to see me again, did you, old friend?” said Flemeth. 

“I recall you said look to you no more,” said Solas.

“Mythal has many aspects,” said Flemeth. “I’m afraid you will not find a helpful one any longer.” She gestured over the hundreds of gravestones, towards the fadefire in the clouds. “Are you not proud of your accomplishment?” 

“My accomplishment?” Solas wanted to dive into denial, as was his wont, but he could not. He was faced with it now, that darkness the spirits who had come earlier that night had mentioned. 

“Why, bringing the Veil down,” replied Flemeth. “Look upon what you have wrought! Masterful, indeed.” 

Solas did not want to look upon it. “But the destruction of the Veil was something you wanted, also.” 

“I did,” answered Flemeth - and she smiled. “This was exactly what I wanted.” 

It was not what Solas had wanted. This was destruction absolute. Destruction of the earth he might have abided - but the destruction of the Fade? It was likely his other self - his future self- had not slept for there was nothing to be found there. And all this destruction - the spirits clinging to the last while the demons stalked the earth. 

He realized he had had some warning of this, years ago. It was a warning he had not heeded. He could do better, _surely,_ than Corypheus’ meddling. 

“Is all this by your design?” demanded Solas. 

Flemeth laughed and lifted her sword. Solas struck, pulling a bolt of levinfire from the air and aiming it for her. She parried it aside lightly, then drove the blade into the earth. There was a snapping, like the bole of a tree cracking under the pressure to fall, or bursting asunder with a storm. The earth jerked and heaved, a great rift forming between Flemeth and Solas, and the broken stone fell away, dropping out into an abyss of cloud and lightning.


	5. The End

**Stave Five - The End**

Winternights passed as all the Winternights before it, but the days that came after were changed. Agents of Fen’harel disappeared, and Idrial’s clandestine Inquisition forces found camps abandoned, missions unfulfilled. Within months, all signs, however subtle, of Fen’harel’s movements and scheming were gone. It seemed a trick, and you wouldn’t blame Idrial or her commanders for scouring every place they could, trapping known spies and bringing them away for questioning. The answer was the same every time: there was no Fen’harel, no plan.

It was on the following Winternights that Idrial Lavellan noticed a wolflike spectre hovering about as she traveled from Kirkwall to Ferelden to visit her sister for the passing of midwinter. There was no excuse for any spectral wolves, as it seemed the threat of death and destruction seemed to have passed. She suspected, at first, she was jumping at shadows, but the wolf-shape did not disappear, kept doggedly on, and, as her journey progressed, she suspected it was more than what it seemed. 

I have no doubt you will want to know what transpired at that meeting: How Idrial stopped on the road and waited for the Wolf to show himself. I suspect she didn’t have to wait very long, and I suspect, too, their conversation was brief. But I cannot answer these questions. All I know is: the visions’ warnings were not forgotten, and Solas turned his course at last. 

What power had wrought such visions, what spirits could play so subtle a game, I cannot say - and I doubt there are many of the wise who can make a worthy guess. Whatever the answer, the course of history was changed, and Winternights, some of us might be bold to claim, holds a certain greater importance of all the holidays of the year.


End file.
